FOUR TIMES THE EFFORT

It's no secret that drugs are a problem throughout the whole Illinois
Valley, but Spring Valley mayor Jim Narczewski proposed a new tool
toward eradicating that problem during Monday night's council
meeting: He asked the city council to consider attacking the problem
on a regional level.

The mayor proposed Spring Valley join together with La Salle, Peru
and Oglesby to create "our own special task force that will work in
conjunction with the state police task force." "Basically, we are one
community," he said. "I think in light of recent events in all our
communities that this would be another layer of law enforcement,
which would be important," the mayor said.

"It would not take the place, obviously, of the state task force,"
the mayor assured the council. Rather, he emphasized the importance
of increased cooperation among the cities to control the problem together.

The mayor said he had presented the idea to the council previously
and had even discussed such a task force several months ago with the
mayors of La Salle, Peru and Oglesby, but one had remained
unconvinced of the importance of further cooperation.

"We can't afford not to do this because it's an ongoing problem and
we need to deal with these people effectively who come down from the
city area and think it's relatively easy pickings around here and
it's not," Narczewski said. "I think it's something that we can do to
show these kinds of people that we mean business," the mayor said.

He asked police chief Mike Miroux and finance chairman Walt Marini to
help draft a formal letter to the other three mayors, to reopen the
conversation.

"The tentative 'OK' by all four communities will be important before
we get involved in anything else. I think it's very well worth it,
and we all know why," Narczewski said.